If you are in Florence at all before the 10th December, you must go to see an astounding collection of Italian paintings that took the Moretti family of Prato, forty years in the making.
The Moretti gallery occupies the ground floor showrooms of the Palazzo Niccolini at the very end of the Florentine street famous for its antiquaires, via dei Fossi. 
The exhibition entitled "From Bernardo Daddi to Giorgio Vasari" features about forty paintings arranged chronologically from Giuliano da Rimini's compelling 'Saint Catherine' (c. 1320) to Bachiacca's unusual 'Holy Family'. 
What marks the exhibition as exceptionally rare is that these paintings, which are mostly of museum quality are actually for sale although they are spared the ignominy of having prices published.
There is a superb hard cover catalogue published with English and Italian text to which such illustrious names as Daniele Benati and Andrea G. De Marchi have contributed. 
The strength of the collection lies in the so-called Italian "Primitives": artists active between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Purists call this period the true Renaissance, shunning the classical revivalist artists of the sixteenth century. 
Outstanding amongst the jewel-like panel paintings is Jacopo di Cione's small portable tabernacle of a 'Madonna and Child enthroned' and flanked by two narrative panels showing the 'Nativity' and the 'Crucifixion'. The triptych was formerly in the Kaulbach collection of Munich and Boskovits attributed it to Jacopo in the 1930's. Impressive also are Mariotto da Nardo's three panels identified by Federico Zeri as part of a dismembered triptych painted for the high altar of the Ospedale di Bigallo 1416-1417. Certainly the painting which will feel most familiar to those that visit the exhibition is Filippo Lippi's tender and luminous 'Madonna and Christ Child' that was acquired from the Marcos collection. The beautiful tempera layers of coral and dusky pink make the figures glow within Lippi's cool grey stone niche.
In a completely different vein from the religious paintings are two cassone panels showing scenes from the life of Alexander the Great. Apollonio di Giovanni's 'Battle of Issus and the family of Darius paying Homage to Alexander' previously in the Philip A. de Laszlo collection is a magical interpretation of classical history following in the tradition of Piero della Francesca and Paolo Uccello.
Lastly the sixteenth century is represented by Botticini's tondo of the 'Holy Family', a sedate 'Madonna and Child' by Niccolo Soggi, an exceptional landscape from Bonifacio de' Pitati with 'Saint Frances receiving the stigmata' once in the prestigious Contini Bonaccossi collection and Bachiacca's 'Holy Family with Young St. John'.
The Vasari mentioned in the exhibition's title is a copy of a well-known del Sarto painting now in the Uffizi. Florian Harb explains in the catalogue that Vasari had close ties with both the artist and the original painting's patron, Ottaviano de'Medici and that this 'Sacra Famiglia' could be one of the copies Vasari himself records. 

You would travel far to see a collection of such quality in the hands of a commercial gallery and you would certainly not receive as warm and unpretentious a welcoming as offered by the Moretti gallery of Florence.

Moretti, Palazzo Niccolini, Piazza Ottaviani 17/r, 50123 Florence
Telephone 055/2654277